Of Bettws-y-Coed—“the Bede House in the Wood”—so much is known that little needs in this place to be said. Here is Pont-y-Pair, and a scene which painting has made more familiar than almost any other in these islands. The bridge has been associated with the name of Inigo Jones, but at least the base of the structure dates back to the fifteenth century, being the work of a mason who must also have been a fine architect, and who died, as it seems, before his work was complete. It has four lofty arches, about which an ancient and gnarled ivy clings. Below, when the water is quiet, one may see the trout dashing about amid the pools. The river-bed is riven and torn, and full of craggy masses. A rocky islet, on which clusters a most picturesque group of fir trees, divides the accelerating waters, that now, after one final battle with obstructions, sweep sharply round a curve, and shortly join the Conway.
PONT-Y-PAIR.
The valley of the LLEDR always presents itself to this present writer’s recollection as he beheld it first, at the end of a dry summer, when the eye feasted without weariness on glowing colour, and when every bend of the river opened up some piece of country which was like one of Turner’s glorious dreams. He saw it last on a day of drifting rain. And in wet or in dry seasons the Lledr valley permits of no comparison between itself and any other. It is incomparable in its various beauty; it is unique in its power of attraction, in its way of producing a satisfying sense of something wholly individual and complete. High up towards Blaenau Festiniog it has little beauty; but before the stream reaches Dolwyddelen Castle the real Lledr valley begins, and is thenceforward down to the junction with the Conway a perpetually changing scene of loveliness. Here again Moel Siabod, seen in a new aspect, but always striking in form and noble in proportions, seems to dominate the landscape. It may be seen from one impressive point with Dolwyddelen Castle in the middle distance. This ruin is the fragment of an ancient stronghold which derives all its present importance from the beauty of its situation. A single tower occupies the summit of a rocky knoll, and stands out clear against its misty mountain background. Yet the castle was fairly large in its day, occupying the whole surface of the hill. Here lived Iorwerth Drwyndwn, whose fortune in battle gained him his surname of “the Broken Nose”; and here, too, Llewelyn the Great is said to have been born. At a later day the castle became the residence of Howel Coetmor, a notorious outlaw and robber chief, who so harried his neighbours that they sat in church with weapons in their hands. A Roman road crossed the Lledr at the village of Dolwyddelen, which is about a mile from the castle, and there are still distinct Roman remains on the hill above the village. But let no one, on that account, meditate on the ruins of empires at the railway station which is called Roman Bridge, for the road crossed the river at quite another place, and the bridge is of an antiquity corresponding to that of the relic which was discovered by the credulous hero of Sir Walter Scott’s romance.
The Lledr wanders about its valley as if it were loth to leave. It makes huge loops and bends, almost knotting itself sometimes into what the sailors call “a figure of eight.” The whole valley is a combination of wildness and fertility, of wide prospects and confined glimpses of sylvan beauty, of wooded hills and frowning crags and broken upland. In rainy weather innumerable foamy streams swell the Lledr, until, in some portions of its course, it seems to make a series of lakes. The oldest bridge is Pont-y-Pant, not far from the entrance to the valley from the direction of Bettws-y-Coed. Below this the stream hurries onwards through woods and meadow-land, under mighty bluffs which are wooded to their summits, and, issuing at length from its rocky barriers, adds to the Conway a volume of water that is equal to its own.
The river MACHNO falls into the Conway a mile or two beyond its junction with the Lledr. It is a short river, drawing to itself a number of little mountain streams, and its principal feature—but that is of the first importance from the tourist point of view—round which painters of landscape seem to encamp themselves all the year through, the falls of the Machno, combines every element of what one may call the ordinary picturesque. The river foams among crags and boulders, and between rocky ledges, from which the trees hang dizzily, casting deep shadows across the stream, and making green reflections in each swirling pool. Then, too, there is Pandy Mill, making a sunshine in the shady place, and a mill-wheel with a tumbling jet of water; and nature seems to have lavished all its softer endearments on this exquisite little scene, delighting the eye with tender arrangements of moss and film-fern, and lichen and hoar boughs.
Photo: Green Bros., Grasmere.